James W. O'Shea

James Wilkerson O'Shea (7 April 1829-18 October 1807) was an American career military officer who was the Colonel of the 1st San Andrean Volunteers during the American Civil War.

Biography
O'Shea was born in the farming community of Sandy Shores in Mexico, located in present-day Blaine County, California. He was among many of the American settlers that had moved to California to settle lands in the rural areas north of the city of Los Santos, with his father Daniel Patrick O'Shea moving to the region from St. Louis, having come from County Donegal in Great Britain's Province of Ireland. O'Shea was raised speaking fluent Spanish as well as English, and helped his father tend to his ranch. When the Mexican-American War began in 1846, the Californians and San Andreans began the "Bear Flag Revolt", named for their flag of the "California Republic". O'Shea was only seventeen when the revolution against Mexico came, but enlisted in the militia and took part in Thomas Blaine's capture of Paleto Bay and later the capture of Los Santos along with Commodore William H.K. Wise. At the end of the war in early 1848 O'Shea was a Captain in the Militia, and when California became a part of the United States, O'Shea was made a captain of the US Army. From 1848 to 1860 he was given command of Fort Kinney on the border with the Utah Territory and fought against the Comanche and Sioux tribes.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, O'Shea was given command of the 1st San Andrean Volunteers, a regiment of local Blaine County and Los Santos County militiamen who were hurriedly uniformed and equipped with rifles. His unit was sent south with the California Column and invaded New Mexico, fighting Henry Hopkins Sibley's Confederate States Army of New Mexico from February to April 1862 and fighting in Texas for the remainder of the war. By war's end his forces had been fighting in Chihuahua against the Confederates and had captured Nashville, the regional capital. O'Shea was mustered out of service in February 1866.

After the war, O'Shea served as Military Governor of Chihuahua and later posted on frontier duties to stop encroaching Plains Nations Indians. In 1886 he retired from military service and worked as a telegraph engineer until his death in 1907 at the age of 78.